Chef David Bancroft got into the food biz early, selling jerky to his classmates in elementary school until he got busted by a teacher.

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Kyle and Amanda Lussier spent five years overcoming challenges to open their own restaurant, The Pines. And speaking of challenges, they did it in a small northern Minnesota town where they admit they’ve had to educate the locals about fine dining. But now they’ve developed a devoted following with a menu of not just classics, but also innovative dishes such as “cauliflower three ways” and tempura battered walleye. And less than a year after opening, Kyle received a James Beard Award nomination in the emerging chef category.

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Mesmerized by the chefs see saw on TV, chef Melissa Perello fell in love with cooking as a child. Her mom still talks about the leg of lamb she made from a cooking show recipe when she was 8 years old! After attending the Culinary Institute of America, she rose through the ranks of fine dining in San Francisco, even winning a Michelin star, before deciding great food could be comfortable, approachable, and casual. And she proves it every day at her own restaurants, Frances and Octavia. She even invented bacon

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Their Washington state restaurant boasts of doing farm to table since 1986 and is credited with helping define Pacific Northwest Cuisine. It even has its own farm, and what they don’t grow there they get from a network of trusted local producers and foragers. When we talked in early Spring their remarkable seasonal tasting menu was spotlighting local specialties ranging from sturgeon to polenta to a Walla Walla sweet onion

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Chef Ana Sortun knew as a teenager that she wanted to cook. At 16 she decided to move to France for culinary school. It changed her life. But so did another trip many years later, to Turkey, where she found her true culinary passion. At her Boston area restaurants, she is cooking up the dishes she has found in more than 30 trips to Turkey, as well as some other flavors of the Mediterranean. And she’s won a James Beard award as Best Chef Northeast.

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James Beard Award winning chef and restaurateur Spike Gjerde has totally re-thought the way restaurants ought to be feeding us. He’s obsessed with doing things his way, building a restaurant group to pursue that passion. And by the way, his food is terrific.

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Kari Lauritzen and Sonya Sanford met and became best friends when both were private chefs in Los Angeles. Now they are coaxing non-cooks into the kitchen and teaching home cooks how to make fabulous meals (and enjoy doing it) on their podcast Food Friends. And in this conversation, they offer some great tips for upping anyone’s home cooking game.  

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Chef Travis Herbert began cooking with his grandmother as a child, but it was sharing a chairlift with a chef at a Utah ski resort that got him into the business. Now he’s got two restaurants at the center of a culinary boom in Salt Lake City, serving up bold flavors and unique dishes—like elk osso buco.

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Chef Star Maye has had a remarkable rise through the culinary world. Born in a small Alabama town, this self-described “black, queer

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Chef Andrew Black got his first cooking job in his native Jamaica in his teens. That began a stellar career that took him to the Ritz in Paris and the Peabody in Memphis. When he was offered a job in Oklahoma City he sneered, “Where the hell is that?” But he checked it out, liked what he found, and has been at the forefront of a culinary revolution there. Chef Black now owns three restaurants in OKC, including the celebrated Grey Sweater, which he says is built on imagination to take diners on a journey of memorable moments, and where he won the 2023 James Beard award as Best Chef Southwest.

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